Founded by a veteran community organizer, the Chicago Video Project produces videotapes for Chicago nonprofits fighting urban problems.

One organization devoted solely to producing videos for grassroots campaigns is the Chicago Video Project (CVP). Founded by former community organizer Bruce Orenstein, CVP exclusively produces organizing driven videos designed to have an integral, utilitarian role in the campaigns of Chicago–area nonprofits. CVP receives the majority of its funding from a variety of Chicago–based foundations.

"organizing driven," says Orenstein, "means there's an organizing plan in which the tape will be used, and the organization has the capacity to carry out and actually complete its plan. You're taking a tape and you're not just grafting it onto a program. You're integrating it into your methods of organizing so that it becomes one of your strategic tools for mobilizing people and influencing your targets. What we're trying to do is really take video and develop it into a strategic tool in organizing for social change."

For nonprofits with solid plans for such tapes, principally organizations representing the poor, CVP produces highly professional videos for a minimal charge, or, in some cases, for free. "Because we live in a society that relies on the graphic communication of ideas," states CVP promotional material, "the poor cannot afford to be locked out of the influential arena of video." Orenstein believes that video possesses a unique ability to frame issues and to focus political discussion. "Who controls the debate," he says, "will often determine the outcome of the issue itself."

Abandoned Building Campaign, a 9–minute video produced by CVP for the local ACORN chapter, helped the organization change Chicago's policy toward abandoned buildings. Produced in the style of a news report, the video outlines the problems posed by abandoned properties. In eyewitness accounts, community members explain how empty buildings breed crime and devalue neighboring properties.

From the outset, ACORN planned to use the video in its grassroots organizing effort to change city policy. ACORN supporters showed the video at roughly 60 house meetings with 10-15 people attending each meeting. Once ACORN had built a strong base of support, groups of citizens began showing the tape to aldermen, housing officials, reporters, and eventually the building commissioner. In a matter of months, the campaign won a $4 million increase in city funding to board up and demolish unsalvageable, empty buildings. ACORN also forced the city to develop a policy to save those buildings which could be renovated.

When asked whether ACORN would have won the campaign without the video, board member Ernestine Whiting responded:

Maybe we would have won without the tape, but it would have been a much longer time frame. So many times when you're dealing with officials on issues, you can talk about the issues, but they really don't seem to understand where you're coming from because they never come out to those communities. So now we can bring the community to them by way of video. And when you identify a problem with the visual eye, it makes you respond more. You cannot deny that there is a problem. Orenstein believes the ACORN tape would have been ineffective if the organization did not have the capacity to mobilize large numbers of people. "Video," he says, "is a tool that is only as effective as the organization using it."

CVP tailors its productions to the size and needs of each organization. When dealing with small organizations that do not have a grassroots network, for example, CVP will create video news releases (VNRs) intended to generate media attention rather than galvanize grassroots support. One VNR, produced for the Mother's Guild of the Henry Horner Housing Project, documented the horrific living conditions in Chicago public housing: bombed–out looking walls and ceilings, broken plumbing, and in one apartment—a dead, decomposing cat.

The dramatic footage generated extensive play in the media, both locally and nationally, and called attention to a lawsuit filed by the Mother's Guild against the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA). Two years after the suit was filed, CHA settled with the Mother's Guild and agreed to spend $200 million on renovations at the Henry Horner Project.

"The video forced CHA to take the suit more seriously than they would have without the media attention," says Orenstein. "I don't think there's any question about that. The media called periodically to see what happened with the suit so that put constant pressure on CHA. The video allowed some very poor people to reach a local and national audience in a very sophisticated way."

But Orenstein does not believe that video in and of itself can win improvements in society. "Change comes about because people organize power," Orenstein continues. "I don't think video forces change or organizes power, people do that."

The Scribe Video Center, a nonprofit media center located in Philadelphia, guides selected community organizations through the "soup to nuts" process of creating their own videos.

Since 1989 the Scribe Video Center has conducted the Community Visions project which enables community organizations to produce their own videos free of charge. Each year a Scribe outreach coordinator solicits proposals from community groups and nonprofits in the Philadelphia area. A selection committee of Scribe staff, professional media makers, and former Community Visions participants select four organizations to receive all the training, tape, and equipment they need to create a 10-15–minute production. Scribe provides guidance to the selected groups and pairs each with a paid professional producer who helps the group produce their tape. Members of the selected organizations take part in the extensive production workshops offered at Scribe. All Scribe requires in return is a 10–month commitment from the selected organizations.

Community Visions looks for groups who have no other kind of access to producing video—principally organizations of color—with a clear understanding of how to use video to further their organizational goals. The project is a "very labor–intensive sweat equity" venture for all involved, says Hebert Peck of Scribe. "Most of the community people involved in the project have nine–to–five jobs...so we want several people from the organization working on the project." Of the 23 community organizations that have participated in the program to date, 20 completed their projects. Three groups withdrew because they did not have the time to finish their productions.

The organizations use the videos directly in their programs. Woodrock, Inc., a high–school after–school program, produced a video about dropouts that not only aired on the local PBS station but is used in classrooms throughout the region. Community Legal Services and Women Against Abuse produced a tape explaining how to obtain restraining orders in Pennsylvania. The group distributes the tape to shelters, health care providers, even law enforcement agencies.

United Hands Community Land Trust, a community development corporation, produced More Than Property, an engaging 13–minute tape in which low–income families describe the experience of achieving home ownership. The video shows that with assistance from United Hands, low–income people are able to purchase and renovate abandoned houses.

The style of the tape suits the content. The sometimes shaky footage, which shows families at work on their new homes, feels like the home movies of several families edited together. The homemade quality of the tape (which makes both producing a video and owning a home look accessible and achievable) invites the target audience of prospective participants to join the home–owning community. More Than Property has been used to successfully recruit new members, has been shown to various community groups working on housing issues, and it has aired on PBS affiliates.

"Though the tapes are varied in terms of the people who make them," says Peck, "the idea is the same: How can the groups, through making these tapes, have some additional impact on their work and in serving their constituencies?"

In Kentucky, a statewide coalition and Appalshop created a grassroots video and a public television program to win a state constitutional amendment preventing coal companies from strip mining private land.

Herb Smith, a veteran producer for Appalshop, started videotaping the destruction of private land by the Kentucky coal industry without knowing how the footage would be used. "When you look to your neighbor's and the bulldozers are coming over the ridge pushing their trees down and the coal companies are saying 'if you don't like it, lump it,' then you know, it starts feeling like it's something you gotta jump in on," said Smith. "It's not like a distant problem. And so we took our cameras and just documented what was happening."

A Kentucky law left on the books since the early 1900s granted coal companies ownership of the coal beneath private land. As a result, mining companies could legally seize and strip mine people's land at will. In 1987, when Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) began a constitutional amendment campaign to change the law, Smith used his footage to create a 20–minute organizing tape for KFTC entitled Fighting for Justice.

KFTC used the tape as a central element in its campaign. The organization distributed several hundred copies to their members statewide who showed the tape extensively at house parties, community meetings, and on cable access stations. Members also used the tape for fundraising and to lobby state representatives. The tape was vital in getting the word out from the less–populated, coal–producing counties to the rest of the state. Kentucky citizens succeeded in placing the issue on the 1988 ballot and KFTC executive director Burt Lauderdale says the video was instrumental to the success of the campaign:

"There was one clip from the video where the coal company is throwing the camera crew and the landowner off of his own property. In this confrontation on tape, the guy talked about what it's like to be thrown off his land. To see how it happens just changes the nature of people's commitment to and understanding of the issue. The ability to use the video to bring those stories into people's homes...I don't think there's anything that can compete with that."

Appalshop uses many techniques to reach the public, and in addition to making Fighting for Justice expressly for KFTC, Appalshop also produced a more traditional news documentary on the mining issue entitled On Our Own Land. Produced by Anne Lewis, On Our Own Land was scheduled to air on the Kentucky PBS affiliate, Kentucky Educational Television (KET), a few weeks before the vote on the constitutional amendment. The documentary incorporated much of the footage from the KFTC video but it also presented the other side of the issue through interviews with coal industry representatives. According to KFTC organizer Lauderdale, "It wasn't so much an advocacy video with a certain point of view, but it could serve our purposes just as well to interview someone from the industry saying why they should strip mine someone's property without their permission."

The coal industry realized this as well. When the chairman of the KET board (who was also a lawyer for the coal industry) learned about the program, he called the executive director of KET and persuaded him to cancel the broadcast. A heated public debate ensued. A three–person panel of university communications professors was appointed to decide the fate of On Our Own Land. They determined that KET should air the program and give the coal industry half an hour for an on–air response.

Ironically, the industry's protests over the film's lack of objectivity ultimately hurt their cause. The Kentucky press covered the controversy over On Our Own Land every day for weeks, increasing the audience for the program and the public's awareness of the issue. A few days after the program aired, 82 percent of the Kentucky electorate voted in favor of reforming the law.

The Appalshop–KFTC collaboration shows that both the direct distribution of organizing tapes through nonprofit membership and broadcasting a more objective documentary can augment a grassroots campaign. When distributed effectively by KFTC members, the stories of the people who had lost their land and the dramatic visuals of strip mining possessed the power to persuade. The more "stepped back from the fray" approach of On Our Own Land also served to mobilize the public.

KFTC went on to try to change similar laws regarding oil and gas development and they commissioned a second tape from Appalshop. But in terms of their ability to use dramatic video, they have become victims of their own successful organizing. "Our members have been getting to people's property in time to prevent industry from taking the land," says Lauderdale. "When we went to make the video for this issue, we had trouble because we have stopped the companies. We have video of verbal confrontations but when you can see someone bulldozing someone else's land, its a picture that can say a thousand words. This tape didn't convey the message at the same gut level." Through the process of using advocacy video, Lauderdale and KFTC have realized that an effective organizing tape requires strong visuals and compelling stories.

Producer Smith sees the need for a well–organized campaign to ensure the success of an advocacy video. "There are technology people who think that as a result of cheap equipment there's going to be an automatic increase in people using the equipment in democratic ways," he says. " Just because you can get your hands on a camcorder doesn't mean you can make an effective tape. The camera just gets you to go, but what we really want to do is win the race."

In a project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Quote...Unquote, Inc., a media communications center in Albuquerque, is training nonprofits to use video and public access television as a sustained and integral part of their campaign efforts.

In a two–year project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Quote...Unquote, Inc. is working with Albuquerque–area nonprofit organizations to determine how video can best assist organizing efforts and be used as a long–term resource.

For years Quote...Unquote, which manages Community Cable Channel 27, had seen nonprofits benefit from the use of cable access television—reaching targeted audiences in considerable numbers. But few organizations had developed a sustained plan for how to incorporate video into their organizational goals. "We're trying to create a model for using video and public access as a regular part of the work of nonprofits," says Quote...Unquote executive director Fernando Moreno. "We want them to empower themselves in the area of video production."

Quote...Unquote chose three diverse partners for the pilot project: the Southwest Organizing Project, a veteran environmental organization with a history of incorporating video into its organizing drives; Catholic Social Services, a chapter of a national organization with virtually no experience using video; and The New Mexico Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance, a relatively small, all–volunteer organization with absolutely no video experience. Lisa Charley, a part–time media organizer with Quote... Unquote, works directly with the selected groups.

Under the guidance of the media organizer, each selected organization produces a short video describing its services, three PSAs, and one studio program that incorporates the other short–format productions and airs on Channel 27.

The relationship between Quote...Unquote and the nonprofit partners continues to evolve and has become more clearly defined during the course of the project. Quote...Unquote now asks each partner to sign a document outlining the relationship between the two organizations. Approval for the partnership must come from the organization's board of directors to ensure that the leadership is committed not only to the project but to incorporating video into the short– and long–term goals of the organization. Quote...Unquote asks that video production and use of public access television be included in the job description(s) of the staff assigned to the project. Quote... Unquote only selects organizations with a strong volunteer base for they found that the nonprofits cannot take on the time–and labor–intensive work of video production without the help of volunteers.

Catholic Social Services is now producing a video about their services. Cindy Camarata, assistant director of Catholic Social Services, has become convinced of the importance of using video in the work of her organization.

"We wouldn't have thought of doing this ourselves. We wouldn't have known how to do it or had the access to the equipment. Now we're thinking about how to incorporate video into the organization...what things we can tape that will save staff time in the future. Everyone goes through an orientation so we could make a videotape for that. There are a lot of in–house programs for staff training that we could put on video, too. We're just coming into the twenty–first century and figuring out what this technology can do for us.I think we were behind the times, because I think most nonprofits see video as tool. It can be so boring to have one person talk about your programs but if you can show your clients talking about how your program helped them, people trust it when they see a client on TV saying 'they really helped me a lot'."

After April 1, 1995, this pilot project will expand into The Media Organizing Project in which Quote...Unquote will work with 10 nonprofits each year.

Next: The Role of Advocacy in National Debate

Last updated: 22 October 2001 mff
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